The Christianity Today 2007 Book Awards are in. Here are the top books arranged by category.

• Apologetics/Evangelism – The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief; by Francis S. Collins (Free Press)
• Biblical Studies - Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony; by Richard Bauckham (Eerdmans)
• Christianity and Culture - The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, by Miroslav Volf (Eerdmans)
• Christian Living - Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?; by Philip Yancey (Zondervan)
• The Church/ Pastoral Leadership - Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples; by Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger (B&H Publishing)
• Fiction - Dwelling Places; by Vinita Hampton Wright (HarperSanFrancisco)
• History/Biography - Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War; by Harry S. Stout (Viking)
• Missions/Global Affairs - The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative; by Christopher J. H. Wright (IVP Academic)
• Spirituality - The Divine Embrace: Recovering the Passionate Spiritual Life; by Robert E. Webber (Baker Books)
• Theology/Ethics - The Shadow of the Antichrist: Nietzsche’s Critique of Christianity; by Stephen N. Williams (Baker Academic)

Awards of Merit:

• Apologetics/Evangelism - Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense; by N. T. Wright (HarperSanFrancisco)
• Biblical Studies - The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made; by Mark Dever (Crossway)
• Christianity and Culture (tie) -
  • Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity; by Edward Gilbreath (IVP Books)
  • Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church; by James K. A. Smith (Baker Academic)
• Christian Living (tie) -
  • The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’ Essential Teachings on Discipleship; by Dallas Willard (HarperSanFrancisco)
  • Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God; by Mark Galli (Baker Books)
• The Church/Pastoral Leadership - Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry and Mission in Practice; by Jonathan R. Wilson (Brazos)
• Fiction - Winter Birds; by Jamie Langston Turner (Bethany House)
• History/Biography - A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan; by Michael Kazin (Knopf)
• Missions/Global Affairs - The New Faces of Christianity: Believing in the Bible in the Global South; by Philip Jenkins (Oxford)
• Spirituality - Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading; by Eugene H. Peterson (Eerdmans)
• Theology/ Ethics - Evil and the Justice of God; by N. T. Wright (IVP Books)

So, have you read any of these? What are your thoughts?

Related posts:

• The Christianity Today 2009 Book Awards
• The Christianity Today 2008 Book Awards
• The Christianity Today 2007 Book Awards

Dutch contractor Johan Huibers has built a massive replica of Noah’s Ark in the town of Schagen in the Netherlands. Huibers’ ark is 2/3 the length of a football field and as high as a 3-story house. That may seem huge, but Noah’s Ark as described in the Bible is actually 5 times larger!

Inside Huibers’ Ark are life-sized models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison, and other animals. There is a petting zoo on the top deck and also a 50-seat theater where children can watch the Noah’s Ark segment from the Disney film Fantasia.

Huiber hopes that his ark will help bring renewed interest in Christianity to the Netherlands, where churchgoing has been in decline for decades. “I would really like to inspire people to search for God and to begin to read the Bible,” he said. Huibers’ ark is fully functional, and he plans to sail the ark to major cities in Belgium and Germany in the near future.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace activists are building an ark of their own on Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat is the location where the Bible records Noah’s Ark resting after the flood. The Greenpeace Ark is a much smaller model than Huibers’. (Huibers’ Ark measures 230ft x 45ft x 30 ft; the Greenpeace Ark will measure 32ft x 13ft x 13ft.) The Greenpeace Ark will be unveiled to the public on Thursday, May 31 as part of a demonstration against global warming.

So that makes for a grand total of three arks now – Noah’s, Hubiers’ and Greenpeace’s – unless it’s true about Noah building two arks. Oh, you didn’t hear about that? Rumor has it that Noah actually built two arks, but he built the first one in the basement and couldn’t get it out.

HT: PastorBlog

Should Christians call Mormonism a cult? Is the word “cult” a useful term in public speech today? These are some of the questions John Mark Reynolds addresses in his article: On “Cult:” Is the Word Useful in Political Speech? The question is especially important to consider with a Mormon, Governor Mitt Romney, currently running for President.

Reynolds points out that the word “cult” has at least three different meanings associated with it. It can mean either:

1. the religious practices of a particular group,
2. a group that claims to be Christian but denies orthodox doctrine, or
3. a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister (Oxford American)

The first definition makes no value judgments and could refer to any religion (including the Christian faith). The second definition makes a value judgment as regards the truth claims of a particular group, i.e. whether or not the group aligns with historic Christian teaching. The third definition makes a value judgment as regards the social acceptability of the group.

When Christians speak of Mormonism, Christian Science, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. as cults, we usually mean the word in the sense of the second definition above. We simply mean that these are groups which claim to be Christian but do not hold to key points of historic Christian doctrine – teachings such as the trinity, the deity of Christ, salvation by faith in Christ alone, or the Bible as our sole authority for faith and practice. These are areas in which Mormons deviate from Christian belief, and so, in this sense of the word, we could properly term Mormonism as a cult.

(more…)

(Part 23 in a series of posts on Habakkuk.)

Habakkuk 3:17-18

How do you exercise faith in God even during the worst of times? The first thing you can do is wait patiently for God even when you are afraid. (verse 16) Secondly, you can choose to rejoice in God even when everything in life goes wrong. Look at verses 17-18:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

These verses represent one of the strongest expressions of faith you will find in the whole Bible, as Habakkuk determines to rejoice in God even when everything else in life goes wrong. Habakkuk paints three scenarios here. Each scenario contains a matching couplet of images.

The first scenario is this: (more…)

Wow, I finally found something that Al Gore and I both have in common. Here is a picture of Al Gore’s desk from Al Gore’s American Life in Time Magazine.

And here is my favorite messy desk picture. This is philosopher Quentin Smith looking for something in his faculty office at Western Michigan University:

Having trouble with your desktop lately? You could try these 10 tips for keeping your desk clean and tidy from LifeClever.com.

Or you could try Nobel prize winner Robert Fogel’s ingenious solution:

When Nobel Laureate and University of Chicago economics professor Robert Fogel found his desk becoming massively piled he simply installed a second desk behind him that now competes in towering clutter with the first. (from A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, by Eric Abramson and David Freedman)

As we messy-desk type people are fond of saying: “A messy desk is the sign of an orderly mind.” It must be true – how else could we posibly find anything?

(Part 22 in a series of posts on Habakkuk.)

Habakkuk 3:16

Yesterday we asked the question: how do you exercise faith in God even during the worst of times? The first thing you can do is wait patiently for God even when you are afraid. Look at verse 16. Habakkuk writes: “I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled.” (Habakkuk 3:16a)

God had told Habakkuk about the coming invasion by the Babylonians. God had described the arrogance, violence, and cruelty of these invaders in chilling detail. God also told Habakkuk about the great and awesome judgments he would bring upon Babylon and indeed upon all the nations of the earth that refuse to submit to God. Habakkuk may even have seen all this in a vision. And Habakkuk is terrified at what will soon take place. He is afraid. His heart pounds in his chest, his lips quiver, he feels physically weak and hardly able to stand. This is Fear Factor multiplied by a hundred and ten.

How do you react when you see pictures of the terrorist attacks that took place on 9/11/2001? Sometimes I just need to hear the words, and that horrible mixture of emotions that hit me on that first 9/11 starts to rise again to the surface. The purpose of terrorism is not just to cause damage and harm but to cause fear. And sadly it works. In the weeks following 9/11, every time I turned on the news I braced myself just in case there had been another attack on our country. Five and half years later, I still brace myself sometimes before turning on the news.

(more…)

Howard Berger, makeup effects and creature designer for the first Narnia film, as well as for the upcoming Prince Caspian movie, discusses the creatures of Narnia in the April 17 posting over at the Narnia blog. 

The story of Prince Caspian takes place 1500 Narnia years after the events of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  So, it was important to reflect these changes for the new movie.

We wanted to take another pass at what the Narnians would be like if they had become more wild in their appearance, seeing how they have been living in hiding within the forests all these centuries. What if they were all different age groups, sizes and races? We felt that the Narnians in the first film were all in their thirties.

What types of creatures can we expect to see in Prince Caspian?

In PRINCE CASPIAN, we have heavy set fauns, old age fauns, female dwarves, centaurs and their families. The minotaurs are now on the side of good. A new hag, a werewolf and the satyrs are back, but all newly redesigned to be more animal-like than the prior movie.

And of course the world of Prince Caspian would not be complete without a great Trumpkin the Dwarf.

I think in every film there is one character you fall in love with. The first movie had Mr. Tumnus, played by the great James McAvoy. This time it is Peter Dinklage who plays Trumpkin the Dwarf. The character is so wonderfully written, and once you see Peter as Trumpkin, he becomes alive and real. We gave Trumpkin his look, but Peter gave him his heart, and the collaboration brings to life a new and interesting addition to this rich world.

If you have not yet read the book Prince Caspian, don’t wait for the movie. The Narnia books are simply some of the best books ever written for children and adults. Go out and buy the whole set or check them out at the library. You will not be disappointed.

Click here for more Narnia and Caspian related posts.
Click here for Narnia sermon series.

(Part 21 in a series of posts on Habakkuk.)

Habakkuk 3:16-19

This is the final week in our Blogging with Habakkuk series. Throughout this series of posts, we have been tracing Habakkuk’s journey from doubt to faith. In these final verses Habakkuk makes one of the strongest statements of faith you will find in all of Scripture. This statement makes a fitting climax to the whole book, and in many ways we have saved the best for last with these verses.

When we started this series back in April, we began by first looking at the prophetic books in general, and we asked the question, “Why are the prophetic books important for us to read and study today?” One of the reasons we gave was this:

The prophets deal with the weighty issues of life – things like God’s character, God’s uniqueness, God’s sovereignty over the nations, God’s requirements for his people, the importance of justice and righteousness. Without the prophets our faith can grow shallow and weak, unable to stand up to the rigors and challenges of life. (Reading the Prophets 3)

This is certainly true with the book of Habakkuk. The book of Habakkuk is all about faith in God. In fact we saw that the key verse of the whole book was Habakkuk 2:4: “The righteous will live by faith.”

We live in a day and age where the best-selling Christian books seem to be the ones that tell you how to prosper, succeed and live the good life. And I would guess that most of us would probably find it easy to exercise faith in God when we are prospering, when life is going well and according to our plans.

But the book of Habakkuk challenges us to put our faith in God even during the worst of times. When Habakkuk reached the end of his journey, he had moved from a place of doubting God to a place of trusting God no matter what. And that “no matter what” was a serious issue for Habakkuk, far more serious than most of the issues we deal with on a daily basis.

(more…)

We had a great worship service at church yesterday. It was a little different from our normal services on two fronts.

1) First of all, the baptisms: I love baptism services. We had six baptisms in church yesterday. Four were children of families in our church, and two were young adults who recently came to Christ. Congratulations Emily, Elizabeth, Jonathan, Emily, Kristie, and Steve!

We practice believer’s baptism at our church, and so all six people baptized were of age to profess Christ as Savior. Each shared a verse and a testimony before entering the baptistery.

Once in the baptistery, I like to ask the candidates three questions before baptizing them.

1. “Are you trusting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? If so, please respond by saying, ‘Jesus is my Lord.’”
2. “Do you turn away from any known sin in your life, asking God to forgive your sin? If so, please respond by saying, ‘I do.’”
3. “Do you desire the fullness of God’s Holy Spirit in your life, that you may live a life that is pleasing to God in every way? If so, please respond by saying, ‘I do.’”

There is nothing quite so thrilling as hearing each person publicly profess their faith in Jesus Christ. On baptism days, instead of a full sermon, I give a brief introduction to baptism, explaining how and why we baptize at our church, and then I let the testimonies of those being baptized do the talking. I have posted yesterday’s introduction to baptism on the Sermons page of the blog under the heading, Baptism Service.

2) Secondly, the setting: Our church (Agawam Church of the Bible) currently meets in the local Junior High School for services on Sunday mornings. We have been saving towards a future facility, and it is a frequent matter of research, conversation, and prayer.

For our service yesterday we met in a church facility that is currently for sale in our town. This was an opportunity to “try out” the facility together as we continue to seek God’s will for our church family. Will we end up buying this facility? Only God knows! It is beyond us right now, but we know that it is not beyond him.

This is an important time for our church family over the next number of weeks as we meet and pray, study the pros and cons of this particular facility, look at the finances, and look to the Lord for his leading and provision. But I have to admit, it was very exciting worshiping in a potential facility that is for sale right in our own town. Please keep us in prayer as we seek God’s will in this situation.

For those of you who had trouble accessing or loading the blog the past couple days, I apologize. There was some bad code on one of the pages that was slowing the whole site down. It has now been fixed.

“You know the best way to double your money? Fold it and put it in your pocket.” (Phyllis Diller)

Covenant Life Church recently put together a paper on the subject of online dating for the single men and women in their church. I like the paper’s opening line: “Don’t you wish it was as easy for you as it was for Adam and Eve?”

The paper identifies some of the benefits of online dating sites:

• Interaction with a much larger group of singles
• Can evaluate a potential date before meeting face-to-face
• Many participants are interested in a serious relationship
• Positive examples of couples who met and got married,

as well as some concerns to consider:

• Expensive – from $30-$50/month
• Time-consuming – can distract from other priorities
• False hope – very few relationships actually end in marriage
• Safety issues – potential predators, liars, con-men/women
• Potential compromise – in the areas of values, standards or beliefs
• Self-focus – can reinforce self-focused view of relationships
• Loss of protection from church community – You lose the benefit of dating someone known by others you trust.

What are your thoughts on online dating? Have you or people you know had positive or negative experiences with online dating sites? What did people do before the internet?

HT: Between Two Worlds